


Change of Heart

by DracoCustos



Category: The Following
Genre: Angst, Implied Character Death, M/M, Spoilers for 1x09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 17:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/738083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoCustos/pseuds/DracoCustos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Paul's death, Jacob reconsiders his loyalties to Joe Carrol and his followers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change of Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://kink-following.livejournal.com/754.html?thread=26098#t26098) on kink-following on LJ. OP wanted sad, I gave them sad. Lots of sad.

“Hello Emma.” Every fiber of his being wanted to hate her; they had loved her, and she’d just run away and left them to die, but while he could feel the rage trying to break through his numb – almost dreamlike – state, he just couldn’t make himself let it out. Not that it stopped him from blaming her for everything that’d happened, of course, or even from walking away from her before she could find anything to say to him, but he’d never been one to make women feel bad just because he was mad at them. So he would walk away, he would have a drink and a nap and then, once he was sure he could handle it without exploding, he would talk to her. He heard the footsteps following him, far too heavy to be hers, and ignored them, since telling whoever they belonged to to just fuck right off would be rude, and his mother hadn’t raised him to be rude.

_She didn’t raise you to be a killer either_ , a voice mocked from the back of his head, but he ignored it, throwing himself face down on the sofa in the sitting room without even taking the time to take his backpack off and only moving enough to put his feet over the arm rest and keep his shoes off of it; another forced habit from his mother. Someone in the room started to protest his presence and he considered raising his head enough to glare at them, but the owner of the feet following him saved him from having to exert any kind of effort.

“Now why don’t you clear out for a bit, me and Jake —”

_Don’t call me that_ , he wanted to snap at him and just couldn’t be fucked to make the words come out of his mouth.

“— here are gonna have a little man to man, might get messy.” There was a pause that made Jacob think whoever the person who so objected to him flopping down on the previously unoccupied sofa wanted to object to being told to get lost, but it only lasted a moment and was broken by the sound of scampering feet and a closing door. “Much better… so, what happened to your grey area then? Leave him in the car?”

He didn’t need to ask to know he was talking about Paul, so he didn’t bother; maybe if he stayed quiet long enough, Roderick would get tired of talking to himself and leave, or at the very least shut up so he could sleep. Sleep sounded like it would do him a whole universe of good. “Come on now, don’t be like that. I’m the reason you made it here at all.”

“Dead,” he forced himself to say it just to get Roderick to stop his attempt at a guilt trip, the word muffled by the fact he’d turned his head just enough to be comfortable instead of having a face-full of sofa cushion. “He got hurt when the feds raided the farmhouse. It got infected.” He heard a glass thunk down on the table – as much effort as it’d taken him to force himself to talk, it took three times that to force his eyes open and even more to make himself reach for the half empty bottle of whiskey on the table, though sitting up and taking a swig from it was disturbingly easy in comparison. He hated whiskey, but right then the nice, sharp burn of it helped.

“Got a reason you ain’t telling your little girlfriend about that?” Roderick settled himself into the chair whoever he’d run out had vacated, his feet on the coffee table when he held a hand out for the bottle, his arm moving to hand it over without anywhere near the effort he thought moving should take.

_Because it’s her fucking fault_ , his mind wanted him to shout, but he busied himself with forcing the backpack off his shoulders and dropping it beside the sofa so he wouldn’t say exactly that.  Maybe he was wrong, maybe it wasn’t her fault and she really hadn’t been getting his messages. “I don’t wanna talk to her about it yet,” he mumbled and leaned back against the arm rest, watching Roderick out of the corner of his eye as he took a swig of whiskey and handed the bottle back.

“Surprised you’re not angry at her really, seeing how she ignored your calls.” Jacob froze with the bottle to his lips when the words sank in, the numbness gone as he felt the anger he’d almost managed to convince away come roaring back to life so fast it made his hands shake. He took another pull from the whiskey bottle, this one big enough that the burn made his stomach contract violently and for a moment he thought he’d puke, but it passed, his hands still shaking as he handed it back. “Li’l Miss Emma was hoping she’d never see the two of you again.”

“Why,” he asked, and the calmness in his voice was terrifying even to him. Some part of him knew that being so calm about this wasn’t a good thing. “Why’d you bring me here just to tell me that?”

“Deserve to know, don’t you? She let y’all get caught,” he paused, hiding his self-satisfied smirk by taking a swig of whiskey. He’d hoped Jacob would show up angry, but prodding him into it was proving just as satisfying. “That girl’s been nothing but trouble since she got rid of you two.”

Jacob ignored the bottle he tried to hand him, had even tuned Roderick out completely somewhere in his explanation, and forced himself up off the sofa in a furious burst of energy, the door slamming closed behind him. “Atta boy,” Roderick told the empty room as he raised a mock toast towards the door, a pleased look on his face.

Somewhere between the sitting room and hers, Jacob had managed to collect himself enough to keep himself from bursting through the door in a rage; that might have been satisfying in the short term, but it wouldn’t help anyone in the long term. He raised a hand to knock, but the door opened before he could, leaving him face to face with a very surprised Emma. “We need to talk,” he said simply, still surprised by just how calm he seemed over this whole situation. A flash of something crossed her face – _guilt?_ he thought with a scoff – and she stepped aside, closing the door behind him. “You ignored our messages.” It was short, to the point, cut right to exactly where he wanted it to and made her squirm under his accusatory stare.

“The feds could have had you,” the excuse sounded hollow even to her.

“I told you we got away,” and the first hints of rage started to creep into his voice. She flinched away from him like he’d slapped her – didn’t sound like a half bad idea, but that was yet another short-term solution with long-term consequences. “You didn’t ask where he was. Do you care, did you _ever_ care?”

“Of course I d—”

“Save your lies for someone who cares,” he snapped at her, strangely pleased when she took a step back from him just from the heat of his words. He felt a smile try to pull at his lips and didn’t fight it, taking a step towards her and watching her take another backwards. Her back came into contact with the wall a few steps later; his hands were on the wall on either side of her before she could decide which way would get her away from him quicker, her heart pounding with fear at the rage she could practically feel radiating off of him. “Do you want to know what happened to him?”

His right hand left the wall to rest on her hip, and he felt her flinch away from the touch like it’d burned her. “Yes,” she said, just the slightest tremor in her voice. The hand trailed up until it came to rest on her neck, feeling her pulse hammer against his palm as his fingers buried themselves in what they could reach of her hair.

“They shot him,” he watched her eyes widen. “You didn’t answer your phone, so we had no way to find someone who could help him, but it was okay; the gunshot didn’t kill him, just bled a lot and hurt a lot.” She almost started to look relieved, but then his hand moved and his fingers closed around her throat, moving higher and higher until she had to stand on her toes to even pretend there was still floor under her. For the span of a heartbeat he thought she was just going to hang there, limp and wide-eyed with shock while he pressed her throat harder, then her hands came up, nails digging into his wrist in an effort to make him let go.

“Jacob,” she managed to rasp out and he only squeezed tighter. She kicked at him, tried to get her knee to connect with his groin, and he only stepped closer, pinning her body against the wall with his own so she wouldn’t manage to hurt him. Her nails left angry red lines on his wrist, hand and forearm, and some of them even bled, but when he felt the dampness on his cheeks, he knew it had nothing to do with pain.

“I loved him,” he mumbled while he watched her start to turn a little blue. Just as suddenly as he’d started, he let her go and stepped away from her, watching her fall to the floor and gasp for breath. She tried to back away from him, but only managed to put her back into a corner and rasp out what he was sure was supposed to be a shout for help. “Do you understand that? I love him,” he sobbed out a choked sounding laugh. “I love him, and he’s _dead_ because of you!”

His shout rang in the silence that followed, and he realized it was god’s honest truth; he had loved Paul, and it’d taken him dying to realize it. She shook as she tried to push herself up and the gentleman Jacob had been raised as had him reaching a hand out to help her up, but she flinched away from him, tried to bury her back further into the wall. He smiled at that and, once she finally got to her feet on wobbly legs, watched her open her mouth, no doubt to shout for someone again. It was his left hand that closed painfully tight around her throat this time, his right fishing under his shirt until he found the knife he’d only started wearing regularly once he’d left his parents’ vacation house – after he’d buried Paul under his mother’s favorite roses. He found himself wondering out of nowhere if Paul even liked roses, wishing he’d thought to ask when he still could.

He thought about using it while he fingered the hilt, thought about all the many ways it might dig into her and even how satisfying it might be to let her bleed to death, but his hand closed tighter around her throat instead. She was still clawing at his arm, but her attempts were getting weaker and soon they stopped altogether and that was the point he let her go. She slumped unmoving to the floor, and Jacob walked away without sparing her so much as a second glance; his job was done, so far as he was concerned. “Leaving so soon?” Roderick’s voice asked as he passed the sitting room and it was then he remembered he’d left his backpack there.

“I can’t stay here,” he said as he went to pick it up, not offering an explanation that Roderick didn’t bother to ask him for. He was thankful for that – what would he even say, that he’d left Emma in an unconscious and most likely dead slump in her room? Roderick’s knowing smile didn’t go unnoticed as he left.

 

Three days… he lay low for three days, making sure he was far enough away from the house that it would take time for them to get to him if anyone decided they wanted vengeance for what he was perfectly content to assume was Emma’s murder. No one from the house had tried to contact him and likewise, he hadn’t made any attempt to contact anyone from the house; there was nothing left for him there, and contacting them would only tell them how to find him before he could accomplish what he wanted to do. He didn’t want them to find him; not ever, and least of all not right then. He was angry, _furious_ even, and he knew exactly what he intended to do. He didn’t feel any of the unease he thought he would when he pulled into the parking lot of the local police department, or even when he got out of the car, leaving both his backpack and the keys in it – he knew he wouldn’t be needing either of them anymore.

Dead silence fell when he walked into the building, his hands held away from his sides in what he hoped showed them he didn’t mean them any harm; after all, it wouldn’t have done him much good to run away if they shot him before he could tell them anything, now would it? The next few minutes happened mostly for their benefit, and he simply went along with their commands until he’d been handcuffed, searched thoroughly, processed, unhandcuffed so he could be fingerprinted, and then finally handcuffed to a table while they waited on the FBI to show up. He said nothing through the whole process unless he was spoken to and even then he just answered their questions, not volunteering any more information than was necessary. They would only make him have to repeat himself when Hardy and the rest showed up if he did, so he thought it’d be easier just to wait, say it all once and hope that was enough for them.

“Jacob Wells,” he didn’t even bother to look up when the door opened, or when he heard his name. “You’re awful cooperative for someone who’s supposed to be a wanted murderer.”

He started to say he hadn’t killed anyone, but that wasn’t true anymore; he’d killed Paul so he wouldn’t suffer anymore, and he’d killed Emma just because it’d felt good to kill her. The FBI didn’t need to know about either incident though, not yet. So he settled for an easy answer, one that was technically true if you ignored the fact it didn’t really tell them anything. “I saw the light.”

“Sure it wasn’t hellfire?” Hardy laughed at his own joke, and Jacob even felt himself smile a bit.

“Maybe it was,” he mumbled, more to himself than to anyone else. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone told me I was gonna burn, sure won’t be the last.”

“Tell us why you’re here, Mr. Wells.”

Jacob took a breath, and then he proceeded to tell them everything. And for the most part, they only listened; he became increasingly grateful for that the longer he talked. He told them about being on the run with Paul, how they’d eventually ended up at his parents’ summer home – conveniently leaving out the part about his mother seeing him there – and even about Paul’s death, glancing up from his hands just long enough to see them look at him in what he figured was disapproval. He could handle disapproval; hell, even _he_ disapproved of himself right then. When he got to the part about his chat with Emma, he considered lying to them and saying he hadn’t laid a hand on her, but a voice in the back of his head told him there wasn’t much point in outright lying now; he didn’t know if he’d really killed her, after all, maybe Roderick had gone to check on her and she had nothing worse than bruises that would match his hands perfectly.

_Or maybe she’s dead_ , a different voice chimed in almost gleefully, and the events of his very short stay at the house all started to pour out of him. They started to ask questions then, but he just kept talking, dropping his head onto his hands when he was finished. He was crying again and he wanted to kick himself for it. The FBI seemed to be done with him and, to his surprise, he felt a box of tissues nudge his arm before they left him alone. Given the choice between a box of tissues and being provoked into committing another murder, he had to admit he greatly preferred the FBI’s treatment.


End file.
